Health Care Protesters are Today’s Confederates

“A zebra does not change its stripes”
African Proverb

Confederates never die.

During the final hours of the American health care debate this week protesters opposed to President Obama and health care insurance reform shouted “nigger” and “faggot” at members of Congress supporting the idea that health care should be deemed a federal right and not merely a state privilege. In fact, Congressman Emanuel Cleaver reported that he was spat upon while moving through the raucous and racially motivated protesters. Really?

For the record, Union forces defeated Confederate traitors in the American Civil War at Appomattox, Virginia in 1865. The Union stood for freedom, federal authority, and the Untied States of America. The Confederates stood for slavery, secession, and states’ rights.

At the War’s end race-conscious resisters to federal authority extending American benefits such as emancipation, citizenship, and voting rights of African Americans protested by domestic terrorism by the formation of the Ku Klux Klan.

In 1954, following the Supreme Court ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education case a small but vocal portion of White Americans protested court-ordered racial desegregation with racial epitaphs and spitting upon school students and those seeking to desegregate lunch counters. The disdain for racial desegregation was so high in the Commonwealth of Virginia that the state closed entire school districts rather than comply with federal law. For example, in his seminal book, In the Matter of Color, the late Judge A. Leon Higginbotham revealed that Virginia led the protest movement against racial desegregation with a policy plan known as Massive Resistance. The most counter intuitive policy was to pay out-of-state university tuition rather than admit African Americans to Virginia colleges and universities.

Likewise, ten years later following the Civil Rights Act of 1964 idiots outnumbered ideas in the rancorous race protesters. The idea of complying to federal law allowing all Americans to eat, sleep, and shop where they pleased—regardless of race—was resisted with unspeakable words and acts.

Today, health care protesters are once again spitting shouted racist phrases at people of color who wish nothing more than the United States of America to honor her words of “all men [and women] are created equal.” Of course, today’s race haters claim policy, not pigment, propels their protests. Really? Such claims are refuted by the fact that they did not protest the policies of George W. Bush’s Administration with such vitriol public actions. After all, if money and federal monitoring were actually the primary issue in health care insurance reform today than the Bush education policy of No Child Left Behind would have also riled today’s resisters. No Child Left Behind was a federal mandate costing hundreds of billions of dollars monitored by the federal government.
Beyond the speeches of last week protesters actually stormed the U.S. Capitol requiring Congressional staffers to remain in their respective offices. Imagine if a crowd of Black protesters had shouted racial slurs, spat upon Member of Congress, and stormed the Capitol Building? In such a case, the National Guard would have more than likely have been dispatched. Moreover, if a Black Congressional leader used profanity in a floor speech as House Minority Leader John Boehner (OH) did, the Congress would have punished that member.
As I listened to, read, and viewed news accounts of the protests this week the constant theme was a “divided policy debate” between supporters of different policy views. Little mention was made of spitting, slurs, and Congressman Boehner’s profane outburst.
As was the case with all-White Confederates during the American Civil War today’s protesters concentrate more on the color of the policy formulator (president Obama) and beneficiaries (poor Black and Brown) than the content of legislation.
Similar to race resisters of yesteryear the Attorney General of Virginia has announced his intention to resist federal authority for health insurance reform by litigation. Confederates never die; they multiply.
By the way, 22 of 34 Democrats who voted against President Obama’s health care insurance reform are from former Confederate or slave states. Hmmmm.


In linking leadership,

Gary L. Flowers
Executive Director & CEO
Black Leadership Forum, Inc.
633 Pennsylvania Ave
5th Floor
Washington, DC 20004
Office: 202.689.1965
Fax: 202.689.1954
Cell: 773.230.3554